Campus Garden

Why a Campus Garden?

A growing trend in colleges and universities is the creation of
an on-campus garden to use for academic purposes and experiential
learning. In recent years, the University at Buffalo (UB) has been
continuously making strides towards improving its overall
sustainability. In partnership, UB Campus Dining and Shops (CDS) is
also working hard at furthering the University’s sustainable
goals. With the support of both CDS and the University, the
introduction of permaculture principles to the campus in the form
of a community garden will enhance both education and awareness of
sustainable practices present on campus. The garden, is a great
opportunity to increase student engagement in the
University’s sustainability efforts by providing a valuable
opportunity for service. Engagement with the garden will connect
the surrounding community to the University. With community
support, the garden will be a valuable asset for the University for
years to come. The garden will be a local source of goods for CDS,
decreasing the need for certain outside food sources, as well as an
eventual donor of produce to the local community.

Mission

The purpose of the garden will be to connect students, faculty
and the community through experiential learning and practice. The
garden will be a model of sustainability and by being accessible
and highly visible, it will contribute to the advancement of the
University at Buffalo and Campus Dining & Shops’
sustainability efforts.

Vision

The students and faculty comprising our committee have a vision
to, in collaboration with Campus Dining and Shops, engage five
percent of all on-campus student volunteer hours through the Campus
Garden. In 2012, UB’s Center for Student Learning and Civic
Engagement (CSLCE) logged 42,455 hours of service, making it our
goal to generate at least 2,123 hours. With that in mind, we view
the Campus Garden as a valuable tool to educate students living in
and around the residential dining facilities featured on campus
about the importance of locally grown produce.

Campus Garden News

Few great projects happen without collaboration, and the UB
Campus Garden is no different. Last year, a UB delegation attended
the UMASS Permaculture Your Campus Conference and returned to
campus energized to put our garden in the ground! This year, three
student leaders--Kelley Mosher, Jay Herrera, and Rebecca
Oaks--attended the UMASS Revisioning Sustainability Conference to
learn more about permaculture and take a deep dive into
sustainability.

We asked them to write about their experiences--check it out!

June 23rd, by Rebecca Oaks

Upon arriving at the Revisioning Sustainability Conference at
the University of Massachusetts (UMASS) I was first and
foremost blown away by how large the campus was. I’d always
felt that UB was a pretty big campus but UMASS is so big! In
the process of trying to find the registration center, I
found their permaculture garden first. Based on the size of what
I’d seen of the school so far, I wasn’t surprised that
their garden was also huge. I received a tour of that garden later
in the evening and it was just incredible. It was in the garden
that I started to understand what permaculture really meant.
I’d focused so much of my thoughts of permaculture as a way
to grow our own food as a lesson in where your food comes from.
However, the tour at the permaculture garden taught me that
it’s more than just creating natural foods; it’s about
re-creating natural systems.

In a permaculture system different kinds of plants live together
in a way that is mutually beneficial. No human input is needed.
That means that people do not weed or add fertilizer or do anything
you might do to control a normal garden. In some sessions it
was referred to as “lazy Gardening.” It was first
crafted in the late 1970s in Australia as a way to mimic ecology to
meet human needs while also increasing human health. It focuses on
creating mutual beneficial symbiotic relationships in plant life. I
have been blown away by what I’ve learned about permaculture
so far. I love the idea of learning from ecology and using ecology
to solve world problems. Nature has had millions of years to figure
things out, and it’s done a really good job. All that
knowledge and experience is just waiting for us to study it and
apply it to our own systems.

When I first got to UMASS and walked around I couldn’t
help but think, “Well of course there garden is so successful
look how big this school is they must have so many more people than
us.” UB is a big school but after walking around I
figured that UMASS must be even bigger. It wasn’t until I
googled both schools that I learned that, population wise, Buffalo
is actually bigger. UBis actually the biggest school in the entire
northeast; this includes all of New York and New England. This
piece of information has motivated me to make our school even
better. As the biggest school in the Northeast we should stand as a
model for other smaller schools to follow. If UMASS, also a
state school with a slightly smaller population, can do it why
can’t we? Our emerging Campus Garden is just a start!

My head is spinning from all the things I’ve learned just
from one full day. The sessions have been really interesting and
informative and talking to all the other students about their own
campus projects has been amazing. I look forward to being able to
bring all these things back to Buffalo in order to improve and grow
our garden and to make UB as sustainable as it can possibly be.

June 24th, by Jay Herrera

Today was an incredible day! Off to a bit of a late start (we
were up by 07:30 HAHA), we headed over to breakfast. It was
pleasant to see the same faces and meet new people in the morning.
Then, after some housekeeping, off to the first session of
the day! I learned so much in this workshop I went to where
it was a panel presenting on composting solutions. Prior to
going into the session, I really thought on-site composting was the
ideal and best way for all businesses to go. Boy, was I
wrong! There are plusees and minuses to each type of
composting, whether it be on-site, both a bit of on-site and
off-site, and completely off-site where it's taken care of by a
third party.

Next, a delicious lunch where I was treated to an awesome chard
and arugula salad and veggies in a corn tortilla, fabulous!
After that we headed off to Ryan's (faculty of UMass Amherst
and a huge component of making their permaculture garden happen)
and with a group of 30-ish people worked on fixing three areas of
his permaculture garden in his home, including planting new plants
next to a cherry tree (or shrub), placing plastic walls underground
to prevent the spread of weeds along a walkway, and even planted
some hazelnut trees! It was definitely the most rewarding
part of the day! To top it all off we got a tour of the
Sirius Ecovillage and it was so cool! I loved seeing how bare
bones and simple everything was, from their aquaponics system to
their compostable toilets to their cob oven that made our pizzas,
including a yummy vegan pizza. The catering company they
hired was also incredible and it fascinated me that their utensils
and dishes and napkins were 100% compostable! Hooray zero
waste! May I add that I also met an amazing musician who goes
by the name The Suitcase Junket and he did a great job. Today
was a wonderful day, and I'm also thinking of bringing the Real
Food Challenge to UB, it's time to make a difference in our food
system!

June 25th, by Kelley Mosher

Wednesday 25 June marked the conclusion of the 2014 Revisioning
Sustainability Conference at UMass Amherst. It was bittersweet. I
speak for the group when I say all of us feel rather like
over-saturated sponges from obtaining the great deal of information
at the conference and are somewhat downhearted at parting with
newly made friends/colleagues/contacts/etc. Yet, we are all
extremely excited for our return to UB where we know our knowledge
and experiences are to be put to the best of use.

As I reflect on the conference’s events, I find myself
asking, “Was I prepared for this?” The level of
intellectual discussion occurring at the Conference was very well
thought-out and posed varying questions testing the predetermined
notions we all carry urrounding ‘sustainability,’
‘permaculture,’ and ‘change,’ just to name
a few. The discussion nd intellectual dialect was not what I was
expecting, but it challenged me in a manner I welcomed
whole-heartedly.

The conference began on Sunday 22 June with a guided tour of the
Franklin Permaculture arden at UMass Amherst, followed by
relaxation after the long drive and settling into the "apartment"
on campus. That evening, Pandora Thomas gave the keynote address.
It was a welcoming address, in which Pandora called upon her roots
in Southern Baptist church tocreate a call-and-response atmosphere.
While engaging us physically in her discussion, she focused on the
social responsibility of permaculture and challenged us mentally to
ponder what she has been doing within this realm. Social
permaculture, as created from the permaculture design principles,
centers around the fundamentals of ‘the problem is the
solution,’ ‘undergo the least change for the greatest
effect,’ ‘redundancy’ and the ‘stacking
function.’ Pandora is a self-escriber “do-er;”
she enjoys being involved 100% in multiple projects and treasures
one-on- one experience with those she is teaching, mentoring,
inspiring, and the like. This attitude has allowed her to broaden
the roots of social permaculture through application of its
fundamentals.

Wrapping-up the conference on Wednesday 25 June our UB group had
a lovely morning of garden work, breakfast, and a final workshop
session. UMass professor Bill Bean proctored the workshop, titled
“From Concept to Reality”. We decided to attend this
workshop after hearing Mr. Bean speak at the afternoon plenary and
having discussion with him during our tour of Sirius Eco-village,
the day prior. Mr. Bean reassured us that the hardest part of our
work was over- we have a secured plot of land and have begun
gardening- and we needed to harness the tools we have to bring our
garden to its fullest potential. What a moving message to hear
about our work thus far! Mr. Bean encouraged the groups in
attendance to designate ‘visionaries’ of the group,
create a unique and valuable mission statement and map out the
groups’ goals with quantitative and qualitative measures.

Leaving the conference was tough, to put it simply. We were all
ready for the mental break and the road trip that lay ahead of us;
however, we had become attached to the inspiring atmosphere
encompassing the UMass campus. As we drove farther from Amherst, MA
and the road stretched evermore toward New York we all came to the
realization that we have the capacity to bring this atmosphere
back to UB and instill it within those we work with at the Campus
Garden. What more could we have hoped for from this adventure:
learning, growth, friendships and motivation come back with each of
us, ready to be yoked.

Showing our UB pride on the "Pride of Amherst" Cow​!

Our group enjoying the local shops in downtown Amherst, MA
This plaque read, "A garden is a work of heart"​